UCLA Biobibliographic Survey Unearths Emeriti Gold & $185,000,000

A news headline in 2003 reported a remarkable matter:

MINERS REFUSE TO WORK AFTER DEATH

This sobering situation utterly failed to stir UCLA emeriti however, because here matters are often its reverse. Academic miners by nature, many among us pursue their professional work unabatedly no matter how many colleagues drop around them. In fact multitudes seem driven to persist into some Great Beyond, as though there’s an Elysium where tenure blesses those who publish after perishing.

Such commitment, or compulsion risking commitment, appeared starkly last spring in the results of the July 2009 - June 2012 triennial emeriti biobibliographic survey at UCLA.

Amounting to a major portion of a UC-wide accounting by the Council of UC Emeriti Associations (CUCEA), 320 out of 976 emeriti here generously took the time to unearth and report on their academic activities, work which otherwise might well have been little noticed—a fate not uncommon for emeriti contributions to the university’s welfare.

While the Nobel for economics that Lloyd Shapley received at the age of 89 glistened as an emeritus highlight in the triennium, other gold quite likely lurked in the depths of less flashily observed efforts. Accordingly, such ore was mined for the survey’s accounting of work by the 33% portion of emeriti who bothered to respond.

The digging was telling: this fractional contingent produced 176 books, over 2,000 articles, 327 book chapters, 636 abstracts, 165 professional reports, and 233 consulting reports besides mentoring 952 grad students and 633 undergrads, and serving on 344 doctoral committees, while whiling away recreational time in writing 1,344 letters of recommendation.

Then too, most squeezed in time for services to their specific specialties or the profession-at-large, giving a total of 1,537 special lectures or papers, serving on 240 national and local professional committees—holding offices on 67 of them—while also taking on 193 editorial appointments, along with the vetting of 2,005 articles and 227 books.

Campus committee work was shouldered by many as well. Partly compensating for the tendency of non-retired faculty to dodge or simply suffer slivers of such work as scantly-rewarded tedium, a noble slice of these emeriti reported serving variously on 182 department, 79 Academic Senate, 59 administration, 46 emeriti, 65 advisory, 37 fund raising, and 31 “other” committees.

Such commitments were broadly echoed, furthermore, by those registering public service on 95 local, 28 state, and 92 national bodies, on which 47 held offices.

Monetary recompense for most of these activities was slight. Aside from grants for research, the Nobel, a few less famous awards, and modest funding for some lectures and teaching, the 121 professional honors and 95 community service honors reported were largely just that: honorary; inexpensive to confer, but (presumably) spiritual GOLD to receive.

*** Prior CUCEA surveys often climaxed with altruism or a high note of this sort. ***

Given UC’s funding challenges however, Adrian Harris, Vice Chancellor–Planning Emeritus, UCLA, recommended that $$ factors should be crassly calculated now. As a perspicaciously practical planner he had a poignant point: When money makes the world go ‘round, as it increasingly appears to be doing for higher education, the world carries UC with it. So a “Financial Data” category was added to the survey this time ‘round.

First, as a monetary factor seldom mentioned, the value personified in the services of this survey’s 320 very senior, prestigious respondents should be considered. To a query of whether they found themselves less, or more, or just as busy as they had been before retirement, 61% of those responding declared themselves just as, or busier.

Given their full-and-part-time academic activities, the value of each emeritus to UCLA could modestly be averaged at $100,000 a year which, applied to the 320 in the survey’s triennium, would total $96 million—$32 million per year—quite likely a very conservative valuation of emeriti services to the campus, since this represents just the 33% responding to the survey.

More tangibly, financial data reported by these 320 respondents totaled $124,669,320 in grant funding (including support for a workforce of 858), plus $56,890,520 in cash donations, and $3,774,950 in cash-equivalent donations, for a grand total of $185,334,790, averaging nearly $62 million per year.

Thus, if the survey’s data are reasonably representative in valuing services rendered and funds annually contributed by just a one-third fraction of UCLA’s emeriti, a conservative estimate of the monetary value of emeriti to UCLA computes to about $100 million per year.

In short, with all of their activities most of these durably live-wire emeriti are VERY valuable assets who have at least avoided the fate of many in another historically lethal headline:

TYPHOON RIPS THROUGH CEMETARY HUNDREDS DEAD

So much for hoping to RIP.

Chuck Berst
Emeriti Biobib Survey Editor